If If you happen to feel a great disturbance in the magnetosphere, it might be because some charged particles from the sun are bopping around in there. And as freaky as that sounds, it’s actually no cause for alarm (as far as I know?). What it is the cause of though, is an Aurora — glowing polar lights named after the Roman goddess of dawn that are just one more reason that our planet is a magical place.

These 25 gorgeous photos of the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights (borealis is Late Latin for “North Wind”) were selected by the…

Finnegan “Finn” Reinhardt is a Texas-based Australian Shepherd dog who has spent the last year brilliantly recreating famous works of art with his best friend and roommate Eliza. Eliza’s keen artistic eye, sense of humor, and skills as a painter are a perfect complement to Finn’s years of practice at being an exceptionally good boy, and the pair have collaborated on dozens of magnificent artistic homages, using just materials they have at home to recreate various masterpieces.

Finn and Eliza’s earliest works are more literal, finding paintings of women and dogs to recreate, but as their journey has progressed they’ve…

Editor’s note: I’m the editor and founder of Tenderly, Summer Anne Burton. If you’re a regular reader, you may have noticed that we haven’t been publishing as often as usual lately. Mostly, that’s been because of my personal problems, some of which I talk about here, and some of which are private. But, we’re coming back! I’ll be blogging here on a near-daily basis and we’ll be bringing in new contributors and your favorite columns are all coming soon. I’ll be writing a bit more next week about what Tenderly has in store and how you can be part of…

Vendetta and Lemony are quite close. They share a lot of the same interests, after all, like rainy days, getting lost in the woods, and long walks in nature. But it would be a dramatic failure of journalism to report these facts without also noting that Vendetta is a German Shepherd. And that Lemony is an Indian runner duck. It is also salient, to this reporter, that these two best friends have a pair of sidekicks called Grisella and Heldig, and that Grisella and Heldig are pigeons, who were rescued as babies.

As any self-respecting duck/dog dynamic duo with pigeon…

Jan Gerdes was a third-generation dairy farmer. He took pride in his work, for a while. But then he started to feel torn, about the work that for so long felt perfectly normal, then began to feel the opposite. He was burnt out, and in 2002 Gerdes decided to sell off his herd. But when the day came to send the final twelve cows to slaughter, he just couldn’t do it. Instead, the farmer was compelled to keep the lucky dozen, and offer them refuge at what would become Germany’s first cow retirement home.

“As a dairy farmer I was…

Vast, inaccessible, and astonishingly beautiful, the ocean can often feel like an alien place, full of danger and enchantment in equal parts. This makes the achievements of photographers who are able to shine a light on this part of our world all the more impressive, as they draw attention to the threats that the ocean faces, reveal its hidden beauty, and bring us face to face with its fascinating inhabitants.

The recently announced winners of the Ocean Photography Awards, organized by Oceanographic Magazine, are truly incredible achievements in this field. Seven major awards were granted, in categories for Ocean Conservation…

Three years ago, I had the difficult task of persuading my now-husband to get a cat. He was adamantly a dog person — he liked cats, but he was convinced they were inferior to dogs as house pets.

Now, he loves both our cats with his whole heart, but when I was trying to convince him, I found the best method was to find a cat that met his needs.

He said cats weren’t loyal? I found a breed that was. He said he wanted to walk a dog? I found a cat breed that loves walks. He said dogs…

Kiko is a 10-month-old Finnish Spitz puppy who insists on doing things her own way—especially when it comes to posing for her person’s Instagram photos. She lives with her sister Tofu and a wise, patient, and long-suffering White Swiss Shepherd named Kaya who acts as the mother of the group.